This invention relates to a device by an ice storage or other room for producing and storing ice, in which the ice is scraped loose and let out for further transportation by means of a conveyor.
In known ice storages it is common to loosen pieces of ice from the mass of ice (often in the shape of cubes or crushed plate-ice) by scraping ice loose by hand by means of a spade or a motorized rake mechanism passed across the top of the ice mass. Detached, comminuted scraped-off pieces of ice land in an underlying conveyor in the form of an auger, a conveyor belt or other transport device.
Ice of this kind is used extensively in the fish industry, where fish is cooled and maintains its quality when shipped over short and long distances. The concrete industry represents another large field of application, where it is often desired to cool sand before cementing.
The top of the ice mass in an ice storage, in the form of the upper ice layer, represents ice which stems from the water which was last cooled and transformed to ice. Thus, the advantageous principle “first in, first out” cannot be followed, and with time ice of the lower layers will become old and of deteriorated quality. This is of particular importance in the fish industry, where, reasonably, “fresh ice” is desired as cover for fish.
Known plants are relatively expensive to buy, maintain and run. Operation is relatively complicated and requires a specially trained engineer/operator. Some times, when detached ice is discharged, so much ice will slide down that the conveyor at floor level may become blocked. Known plants are less suitable for smaller ice storages with capacities of about 50 tons.
Other plants are known, which comprise ice storages with one auger, several such augers or chain drive at the bottom. The first type is expensive in production, is restricted as to size and cannot be used in connection with all normal types of ice. The most important drawback is, however, the liability of the construction to require additional cooling. With several augers at the bottom of the ice storage, they are placed one beside the other. Such a known plant has an ice production capacity of about 10–20 tons of ice in one day. This known plant has low ice storage capacity, and does not allow intermediate storage of produced ice to any great extent. By such wanting ice storage capacity, the production capacity is far too small. The known plant with chain drive at the bottom of the ice storage has, by one short wall of the storage, an ice-chipping device which chips off ice from an adjacent ice mass surface. The resulting chipped-off pieces of ice subsequently fall down to an underlying auger. Also this known plant is restricted to smaller sizes and capacities, about 10–20 tons of ice per day.
Besides the above-mentioned plants for producing, dividing and releasing ice, there are also manual ice storages, which constitute the system used most to date in connection with smaller plants. The ice is chopped into small pieces with a spade and are shovelled by hand into the rotating auger which transports the ice out of the ice storage. This manually operated plant assumes that the operator treads and walks on the ice chopped loose, and the use of such ice in connection with foodstuffs is not allowed.
A variant of said manually operated ice storage is the so-called “minor ice storage”, in which loosened, comminuted ice is taken out through hatch openings at the side of the ice storage and into the utility crate. This variant of a plant is still in use and represents a small investment, but it is laborious and only suitable in connection with a minor ice storage capacity, a daily production of ice of about 10–15 tons.